I sniffed the air. “Shit.”
And as my sister fell apart laughing while chopping up the vegetables, I worked quickly to salvage the cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary from the infused hot oil.
Before I tossed the steaks in and did what I did best.
13
FANGS
“Whatcha got for me, Reaper,” I said as I hunched over his shoulder.
He continued typing away furiously on his keyboard. “I’ve got Pete setting up a space for me to get set up in the van at the docks. He’s stacking up some brush in an empty space by the fence that’ll, hopefully, conceal us well.”
I patted his shoulder. “Great, keep at it and let me know if you need anything. Bender?”
My V.P. popped his head up. “Viper and I almost got everything ready. We’ve cleaned our arsenal down, and now we’re loading everything up with ammo and setting out extras, just in case.”
I nodded. “We got the earpieces up and running? We’ll be spread out, so we need to stay connected.”
Viper tapped his ear. “All of them are fully functional and will be ready by tonight.”
I smirked. “Fantastic. Angel? You and Goose making any headway?”
Goose drew in a deep breath. “We’re a little short on things like antiseptic wipes and suture kits, but that’s for the ‘death hath no fury like women scorned’ ending. If we even get out only fifty percent as clean as we want, we’ll have enough supplies.”
I sat with that for a little while. “I don’t want to risk us blowing the only upper hand we’ve had since this shit started, so it’ll have to do. Make one more canvass around the clubhouse and make sure to gather absolutely every piece of medical shit you come across. Whatever we’re left with, we can divvy out individually after the fact.”
“What about you?” Bender asked with a cheeky fucking grin on his face. “How are things going on your end?”
“Wait, he’s working on an end?” Angel asked playfully.
“Hey, now,” Reaper said as he continued aimlessly clicking away, “he just gave himself up for our safety. Let’s cut him some slack.”
I pointed at him. “Yeah, what he said.”
But then, Reaper grinned along with them. “It wouldn’t kill him to offer a helping hand, though.”
“Oh, all right, already. Damn,” I grumbled.
The guys fell apart in laughter and for the life of me, outside of our church meeting earlier in that day, I couldn’t figure out when the last time was that we had all been gathered like this and enjoying ourselves. Honestly, it was probably before Heist had been burned down.
In fact, I was pretty sure it was the night Heist burned down, exactly.
I can’t wait to get my life back.
“Is anyone fucking with the insurance companies yet?” I asked.
The room paused before Viper shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”
I nodded as I turned toward the door. “Then, that’s what I’m going to do. We need to get that process rolling before we miss our window to report the latest round of messes. I’ll be back in a bit with news.”
As I left them to their own devices, I felt good about how things were coming together for tomorrow night. I tried my best not to let hope misconstrue the situation at hand, but it was the first truly positive development we’d had throughout this entire ordeal. It felt good thinking that we’d be able to take them by surprise. It felt even better that we still had dockhands that were loyal to us, though I didn’t have my head in the sand. I knew there were other dockhands dancing around ours that had been paid off with sex trafficking money, which was why we needed to make our errands and communications as sparse as possible. Because if we played our cards right, the nightmare would be over in twenty-four hours.
All we had to do was lead Bullet right into our trap.
“Okay,” I murmured as I walked into my bedroom, “where is that contact paperwork?”
I hated having a formal office downstairs. It made my job feel too much like… well, a job. I got onto my hands and knees and rummaged around, my fingertips finding the accordion binder where I kept duplicates of our most precious paperwork. Usually, I kept sets in the joint offices my men had in our clubs. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew that I needed sets of paperwork closer to home than I would have liked.
